"Have you already mastered all five of today’s Zero Tier basic runes?" Jose looked with disbelief at Gaode, who had just knocked on his door.
"So I was thinking, could we increase my daily study load for basic runes?" Gaode earnestly proposed.
In fact, growing up, his study habits had always leaned more toward self-teaching.
Because the things taught by teachers in class were too basic, requiring hardly any time to master.
But this world was different from his past life. He couldn’t just "go online" and search up a bunch of courses and materials.
Knowledge in this world was firmly controlled by High-Ring Mages. You couldn’t necessarily buy it even if you had the money, let alone find it available to the public.
Therefore, his only option was to bother Jose.
"Let me see the runes you drew today," Jose said, making his request as his emotions settled slightly.
He needed to confirm that Gaode had indeed mastered today’s five basic runes before he would assign him "extra tasks."
Gaode was prepared. He handed the magic paper with the drawn basic runes to Jose.
Jose took the magic paper and looked at it, letting out an involuntary "Huh?"
"Your Pen Technique... is very experienced." As he spoke, he couldn’t help but look up at Gaode.
In Jose’s "educational" philosophy, the primary focus was generally on "steadiness."
He wouldn’t belittle his students, as it would affect their mindset and self-confidence, nor would he praise them easily, fearing they would become arrogant and conceited.
Unless... the student truly did an exceptionally good job.
Like right now.
The boy had clearly been studying Rune Science for less than two months, yet his Pen Technique was already indistinguishable from veterans who had been immersed in the art for a year or two.
It had only been a few days, yet he had already reached this level.
"What about the failed, discarded runes? Show those to me as well. It’s best not to throw away scrap rune paper. By collecting them and studying them more, you can draw experience and gain something from them," Jose instructed earnestly.
"I understand..." Gaode smiled in embarrassment. "But today they were all successful on the first try, so there are no discarded runes."
Being over three hundred years old and having spent years researching Rune Logic and Computation, Jose had always been a rigid, reticent man, as stubbornly silent as a stone. His impression to outsiders had always been that of an old pedant.
At this moment, this steady old pedant’s voice was louder than ever before. "What did you say?!"
"Fuck..." Before Gaode could answer, he couldn’t help but swear. However, halfway through, he suddenly realized that swearing in front of his student would damage his image, and he abruptly stopped.
But the intense emotions inside him desperately needed to be expressed, and his usually uncommunicative mouth turned into a machine gun.
"That thing currently hanging in the sky, we call it the sun. There is only one. But today, a second one has appeared. Gaode... Fuck! How did you do it? Learning fast is one thing, but how can you not make a single mistake? Are you really a beginner?"
Jose had always known that Gaode was talented—very talented.
But he still couldn’t understand how he managed to do this.
"After learning a lot of basic runes, I discovered that all basic runes actually follow some kind of similar pattern. I can deduce part of the information for a new rune based on old runes," Gaode said, giving his answer after a moment of thought. "So later on, learning new runes isn’t starting from scratch anymore, but rather a combination of parts of old runes and parts of new runes. The learning difficulty decreases, and naturally, I learn faster."
Aside from the underlying logic, Runes also shared similarities with Chinese characters in terms of information capacity.
For instance, in Chinese characters, words related to sounds made by the mouth mostly share the "mouth" radical, such as "ha," "hee," and "heh"...
Runes were the same. Runes of the same nature but with different functions generally shared this kind of similarity.
"Runes are indeed like that. It usually takes an ordinary person at least a year or two of studying Rune Science to gradually realize this... For you to have this kind of Detection in less than two months shows very strong Insight.
"But let’s leave that aside. That’s only the reason why you learn fast; it’s not a reason for you to not make a single mistake."
"Then I don’t know."
Gaode replayed the process of drawing the runes in his mind and confirmed that he didn’t use any special techniques. He answered honestly, "I just drew the runes according to the rune charts and based on my own feeling. I just don’t know why I rarely fail."
"You are a fucking genius!" Jose finally couldn’t hold it back and let the entire swear word slip out.
It wasn’t the first time he had given the evaluation of a genius.
But the weight behind this "genius" far surpassed the previous time.
"Alright, starting today, your daily basic rune study load will be increased to ten." Jose pulled a few more rune charts from the mountain of documents on his desk and tossed them to Gaode. "It’s best if you can complete them, but if you can’t, leave them for the next day. Under no circumstances should you force yourself.
"Learning fast is a skill, but it isn’t the whole picture. Learning deeply and going far is the true skill. Even if you’re a bit slower, it doesn’t matter. Do you understand?"
"Understood," Gaode replied respectfully, though he didn’t entirely agree with Jose’s statement in his heart.
Learning fast, deeply, and far all at once—that was true skill.
He had inherited the educational system of his past life—an educational system built on layers of examinations and eliminations from a young age. In that kind of educational environment, learning slowly was a death sentence.
If you were one step behind in elementary school, you wouldn’t get into a good middle school. If you didn’t get into a good middle school, you wouldn’t get into a good high school. Naturally, getting into a good university would be even more impossible.
Not to mention, expecting Gaode—who was extremely young in both his past and present lives—to understand the concept of a "late bloomer" was clearly unrealistic.
...
Leaving the Gavin Building, which belonged to the Rune Department, Gaode went to the Magic Potion Department.
He wasn’t here to attend class today, but rather to claim a medicine field and Magic Plant seeds.
This was the examination content for the Magic Plant Cultivation course.
He had to select a certain number of seeds from the provided Magic Plant seeds, and then plant and cultivate them in the medicine field.
Finally, his grade and whether he passed the Magic Plant Cultivation course evaluation would be judged based on the number of surviving Magic Plants and their condition after survival.
Since Magic Plants required a certain amount of time to grow, students had to claim their medicine fields and begin seed cultivation halfway through the Magic Plant Cultivation course. Otherwise, they wouldn’t catch up in time for the grading when the course concluded.
"These are all the seeds you can choose from." After he stated his purpose, a student from the Magic Potion Department quickly led Gaode to the seed vault and let him choose for himself.
"These are the seeds for Zero Tier Magic Plants. There’s Alocasia Fruit, Dawn Grass, Frost Snow Flower... And these are the seeds for Tier One Magic Plants: Silver Lotus Grass, Thorny Fruit..."
He gave Gaode a brief introduction to the available seeds. They were all Magic Plants whose cultivation methods had been taught in the Magic Plant Cultivation course.
"You can claim all these seeds; there’s no limit."
The seeds themselves weren’t considered particularly valuable, so there was no quantity limit.
"For the Magic Plant Cultivation course, as long as you cultivate ten Tier One Magic Plants in good condition, or thirty Zero Tier Magic Plants in good condition, you can get a perfect score on the course evaluation. Right now, there are only two months left until the Magic Plant Cultivation course concludes..."
The Magic Plant Cultivation course spanned four months, making it one of the longer branch courses.
"So you need to choose Magic Plant seeds with short growth cycles," the Magic Potion Department student reminded him while Gaode was picking out his seeds.